Where every Pac-12 team ranks in ESPN's SP+ rankings

It is never too early to look ahead to the next college football season, especially when you consider those of us who love the sport deeply miss it already.

The onslaught of recruiting and transfers flying around has simmered down, and now college football fans turn their attention to spring ball. Most program's spring games will be taking place in March and April, but just because we haven't seen how each team looks after key departures doesn't mean it's too early to rank them ahead of next season.

That is exactly what ESPN's Bill Connelly did, as he released the 2023 preseason college football SP+ rankings. Connelly uses three categories for the basis of his rankings, which are returning production, recent recruiting (including transfers), and lastly recent history.

In his words the SP+ is "a tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency. It is a predictive measure of the most sustainable and predictable aspects of football, not a résumé ranking, and, along those same lines, these projections aren't intended to be a guess at what the AP Top 25 will look like at the end of the year. These are simply early offseason power rankings based on the information we have been able to gather to date."

Let's take a look at where each Pac-12 team ranks based on this criteria.

Stanford

Ranking: 102

Rating: -13.2

Colorado

Ranking: 94

Rating: -10.9

Arizona

Ranking: 78

Rating: -5.8

Arizona State

Ranking: 63

Rating: 0.7

Cal

Ranking: 58

Rating: 2.6

Washington State

Ranking: 53

Rating: 3.7

Oregon State

Ranking: 31

Rating: 12.3

UCLA

Ranking: 21

Rating: 12.3

Washington

Ranking: 16

Rating: 18.7

Utah

Ranking: 13

Rating: 19.0

USC

Ranking: 10

Rating: 21.3

Oregon

Ranking: 8

Rating: 21.6